After couple accepted stranger’s job offer, the whole family disappeared

Ronnie and Doreen — an Indigenous Canadian couple with two young sons, Ryan, 4, and Russell, 9 — were last heard from just before they accepted a stranger’s offer of a ride and a short-term job at a logging camp. In an economic bind, they jumped at the opportunity.

But after the Jack family got into the man’s pickup truck with hopes of turning the page towards better fortunes, they were never heard from again. Decades later, investigators are still stumped about what happened, while the Jack family has continued to raise awareness and search for clues.

Here’s what we know.

Ronnie and Doreen Jack met in school and became close after Doreen came to live with the Jack family following her father’s death, Ronnie’s mother Mabel told Canadian officials with the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in 2017. They became high school sweethearts, and later started a family.

Ronnie’s mother Mabel remembers her son and Doreen as a happy couple who were good to each other, with no signs of issues between them. But by August 1989, Ronnie was desperately looking for work, leading him to take a leap of faith when a stranger he’d met at a local pub offered him an odd job.

A Mysterious Man

On the night of Aug. 1, 1989, Ronnie was roughly four blocks away from the family’s home at First Litre Pub when he met the mysterious man who made him the job offer, according to The Prince George Citizen.

The man, who investigators believe was White and around 35 years old, offered Ronnie and his wife a short-term job at a logging camp that would also purportedly provide daycare for their children. The CBC reported that Ronnie called his mother shortly after the exchange and told her about the opportunity, explaining the man told them that he and Doreen were expected to be on the job for 10 days before returning home. However, the couple and their sons never came home.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police believe Ronnie and Doreen’s last known action was departing their home along with their sons when they got into “a dark coloured 4×4 pick-up” truck with the unknown man.

“I was the last one to speak to Ronnie,” Mabel said in 2022, according to the Burns Lake Lakes District News. “And he said to me, ‘Mom, I am going to work near Clucluz Lake, and if you don’t hear from me, come looking.’ And something felt wrong about this whole thing.”

It’s been more than 35 years since the Jack family disappeared and there have been few clues to where they went and what happened to them the night they met the man at First Litre Pub. The only lead investigators received was an anonymous phone call in 1996 from a man who told police the Jack family was buried on an unspecified ranch before hanging up, according to Canada Unsolved. Investigators publicly pleaded for the man to call back with more information, but he never did, and the case has since remained stalled for decades.

Doreen’s sister Marlene Jack said she will never give up searching for her sister, as she and other family members have continued looking for answers.

“I love my sister with all my heart. I miss her,” Marlene said, speaking at a vigil for the Jack family last year, according to CBC. “I’m not giving up. I’m not stopping and I’m not going away. I’m gonna be here. If anyone has any information I’m here.”